Walkabout Thoughts #77

Thoughts & Stream of Consciousness, rough and ready, from an award-winning filmmaker and author you’ve never heard of, while walking off long Covid, and listening to podcasts…

...walking day is 5/22/2024 (I would have had this out sooner, I just forgot about it and got wrapped up in watching the Kevin Spacey doc, and the 2 parts of The Jinx, and associated "All Good Things" film that I thought was better than its ratings).

 
Weather for the day… starting out, 56° cloudy, cool starting out 59° when I got home at noon.

Podcast WTF? Marc Maron Episode 1540 - Daniel Stern.

Then, Pod Save America, Ep., Trump Promises "A Unified Reich"

So, a little cool today. This week I noticed I’m not really feeling long Covid anymore. A few days ago I had a couple of glasses of wine with spaghetti for lunch. After a day's break from alcohol, I then had the rest of it with lunch yesterday

But I’m noticing a core feeling of feeling good. Like I’m feeling healthy again in spurts, every once in a while, a few times a day, a flash of better health. Just this deep feeling of...normal. Today is the day, it's been six weeks since I had a 3 day course of Paxlovid for my 3rd Covid infection. So I’m hoping it stays this way.

It was really hard to do the 1st mile today. At the beginning of every walk lately, there’s a... I don’t know, a tightness maybe, in my chest? After the first half mile or so it goes away. Not sure what that is. I think it’s a lack of exercise.

I’m now finishing my 3rd mile, after my first I didn’t feel like doing another mile. But I'd like to do 5 miles today.

I was really sick of this past winter and I’m really tired of this spring so far. Another week or two and this weird schizophrenic weather should settle down into summer, or so it looks anyway.

I noticed there's one book in the free little library kiosk today. Really makes me wonder if somebody sketchy didn’t just take all the books one day and sell them at a used bookstore. Maybe hitting a bunch of kiosks on the same day. We have some meth addict types around. You can’t miss them when they’re lurking through the streets looking pretty bad and obviously casing cars and houses. 

On this podcast, it’s a pretty good one because just about everybody knows this character actor Daniel SternDaniel Stern (most famously from Joe Peschi's accomplice in "Home Alone"). His stories about who he’s worked with and how he got started are pretty fun and interesting, especially if you’re into film.

I realized I’m very good at and have skills for a couple of things that have been very handy in my life. I’m very good at taking some thing that’s "there" and seeing its weaknesses and gems within that need to be polished. And that’s really all writing is. I mean you have got to write that first draft. Even if it’s a shitty first draft, on the second go around you can fix that. Only a couple of times in my life have I written a first draft that was just unfixable.

I realized that’s kind of what I did with my kids in raising them. Trying to take what they had and helped them make it better, rather than force them into what I wanted them to be or think that they should be. Thought I do think a parent needs to do a little of that, too.

I do want to mention that Saturday or maybe it was Friday night, I was looking for something to watch and started the Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended edition, which is like four hours for each movie. When I finished that on Sunday, I started on The Hobbit and finished that yesterday. I think I'd forgotten the last 40 minutes of The Hobbit movie.

I realized that I first read The Hobbit 54 years ago. I was 14 in 10th grade in my first year of high school. My cousin, who went to a different school, was a year behind me even though we’re separated by only three months. My mother said when she found I could start 1st grade because of my birthdaite, that was it, I was starting school to give her a break at home.

My cousin had suggested I read this book she thought I would like, "The Hobbit". I had been reading books incessantly for years. I would get grounded a lot as a child and would just go to my room and pick up a book and I’m suddenly... not in my bedroom. 

Anyway, I started showing up early to school and would go into our theater on the balcony at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington and would sit there and read until the bell rang. When I finished that book and raved about it, she said, "Well, since you loved The Hobbit so much..." and she gave me Lord of the Rings to read. Which was a shock. Because I loved The naivete The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings was a starkly more grown-up book. But after I got into LOR, I eventually grew to love it.

Getting drizzled on every now and then. I have to say I like it a little cooler. When it’s too warm out anymore, when I used to love hiking in the heat… Probably because of my age now it doesn’t react on me very well. I figure 1 mile in this weather is like 2 miles miles when it’s 70 something.

On the podcast...it’s interesting to hear him talk about the movie "Diner" (1982). And what he has to say about Paul ReiserPaul Reiser on that and how the Director Barry Levinson almost tossed the script. But they ended up sitting and shooting for a month, the actors talking in the diner, kind of following Paul Reiser‘s lead, who just came up with great shit in the moment. Then when he saw the film, finally, he was surprised to see that most of the film was just them riffing at a diner while embedded within the plot.

Finally, at the end of the podcast, they get to the reason why he’s there, which is that he wrote a book: “Home and Alone”.

For some reason, I was just thinking about missed opportunities...I've mentioned before some of those in business/art. I'd written a mainframe word processing manual when I worked for University of Washington's MCIS that was successful at two major hospitals (the then UW Hospital, now UWMC and its associated Harvorview Medical Center both now UW Medicine). But Digital Equipment Corporation killed it, because I broke the cardinal sin of pointing out "bugs" in their software. they could be vindictive as their company slowly disintegrated back in the late 80s. 

But here I was thinking of romantic missed opportunities...

In the mid 80s I worked in Seattle at the Tower Video, Mercer Street store with Jeff AmentJeff Ament of Pearl JamPearl Jam. Back then he was with Green River. He was our media buyer. I’ve told the story before. Jeff turned his position over to me as I was taking that on additionally since I was also a supervisor and I lived with the manager. 

Mark and I had moved up from Tacoma Tower stores where we had worked at Tower Records together and then Tower Video when he opened it and I had just graduated from Western Washington University up north past Seattle in Bellingham, near the Canadian border. Mark began at Records while I was still in the USAF. 

I began at Tower Posters next-door to earn some extra money aside from my VA educational benefits check. I got my AA degree at Ft Steilacoom Community College (now Pierce College),  with full college accreditation which we knew it was headed toward when I was going there. It was rated the best Comm. Col. in the state then. After I graduated I was done. I was surprised I'd even gotten a college degree. My girlfriend was going to go to a university so I thought I'd tag along. I had also promised her I'd get her through college. So we moved up to Western in Bellingham.

Anyway, Jeff said he wanted make a real effort at being a musician. So he was quitting his Tower job. I’ve always wanted to see him play, but I wasn’t making much money and I had no money for a concert ticket to see his band. Which obviously I regret, now. I kept hoping he would say, "Hey if you want to come see the band, I’ll get you in." I would’ve definitely gone. But he was very humble and maybe too humble to think I might want to see his stupid band. Which is funny because he’ll never know how bad I wanted to see his band. Living with the manager I held a weird position in the store. People were intimidated by that. Which I eventually won people over. But it took a while.

Anyway, I went down the street from Tower at lunch one day to get a gyro at the Greek place up Mercer St., and had a Celebrator Doppelbock beer (a beer that always made me feel very good and happy).It some with a plastic goat on a string and I would tie them to my buttons. An employee one day confessed they could tell how easy going I'd be after lunch by how many goats were tied to my shirt. I stopped doing that.

When I returned from lunch that day, an employee came up to me and said, "Hey Jeff was here looking for you." I questioned him on that because it didn’t make sense. But he said, "Come on. I know Jeff and he was here looking for you. I told him you were at lunch and so he left." I was bummed. I'd always liked Jeff.

So there is an opportunity I will never know what the hell it was about. As I remember it most of us at Tower were partiers. But Jeff didn’t smoke weed and said he wasn’t into drugs and stuff. He wanted to be a serious musician and I always respected that and his desire to go on to be one and get somewhere. And I told him that the day he told me he was quitting, that "Of everybody who worked at our three tower stores, if anyone could make it, it would be him. He seemed touch deeply by that. He looked down and thought and then looked at me and said “I really, really appreciate that man. Thanks” and I told him, 'Well it’s true and I really believe it."

Another missed opportunity…

When I worked at Tower Posters this really attractive redhead started working there. Summertimes she would put on a bikini and at lunchtime go out and lie on her car good, on a blanket in the sun, in the big parking lot. It was kind of intimidating to the other girls who worked at the store who would complain about it. But  none of the guys who worked there had a problem with it.

Then I switched to Tower Records next door. One night she showed up on a late shift on a slow night and tried to talk me into driving her to Seattle to see a band at the Paramount Theatre.

I was living alone at the time. My girlfriend had gone to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, south of Spokane.. She wanted to be a veterinarian but going through some things, being 18 and her firs time away from home. She was seeing guys and it kind of hurt. So we took a break from our relationship in order to possibly save our relationship. I'd been married and divorced, through the USAF. So I felt she just needed to get her freedom exercised if we were going to have a relationship at all. 

So that night that really good-looking redhead and I drove to Seattle. We park and go to the theatre and then she tells me we need tickets. I was like, "Wait, you brought me up here and you don’t have tickets?" Did I say she was really good-looking? So we (that is I) bought some from tickets from a scalper on the corner, two tickets I think were $20 (and left me nearly broke). I warned him, "If these are counterfeit, because I know that’s going around, I’m coming back for you." But he said, "No man they’re real," and he just seemed honest, so I bought them and we went inside and MotorheadMotorhead was playing. Lemmie, right there on stage. I didn't really know them at that time but at least I can say I was at one of their concerts and saw Lemmie on stage! All we saw was a sea of long black hair banging up and down in unison. Your traditional "headbangers" concert in 1981. I wasn’t as much into Motorhead then as I was somewhat more years later. But we just stood there in the back for about 15 minutes until she finally said, "Do you want to go? This really isn’t my taste of music." I wanted to stay, but I also really wanted to "get to know her better." So we left.

So I drive her home. I was having high hopes for us getting together that night. I know my girlfriend at a university far away was seeing other guys and I kind of wanted to build a buffer to that by dating some women myself. So when we got to her place, I walked her to her door when she said, "Thanks goodnight." Hey, I tried to talk my way in but it wasn't going to work. She was very cute and flirty, but it wasn't happening.

So I said goodnight and drove off. But I only got about a mile away when the car ran out of gas. I used to have that problem with that old 67 Impala beater. You had to guess about when the tank was actually empty and I never had much money. The days of putting a dollar or two in the tank, when gas was about about $1.19 a gallon.

I had grown up, first started driving in the early 70s when gas was around 30 cents a gallon. Good times in high school when you literally COULD search your couch for spare change that fell out of people's pockets and find enough to go for a drive. Now you seem to need to take a loan out for that. I went through the gas shortage years when the price bounced up to around a dollar a gallon. And people were not happy about it or OPEC.

So humiliated, I walked back to her place. She wasn’t buying that I ran out of gas. But I convinced her. Apparently, she and her younger sister lived with their dad and he was away on a business trip. She made me promise to stay in his bedroom. I was like, "Yeah fine whatever I just don’t wanna walk home at like midnight." So I got up the next morning and this extremely cute younger girl maybe 15(?) comes walking through and it’s her younger sister. They made me breakfast and I walked to the car and then walked to a gas station, got some gas and drove home.

Cut to that next year. My girlfriend had trouble with alcohol ("Wazzu" is a famous party school that Playboy that next year rated as a "professional party school that was not eligible for rating in their annual university party school rating", and she was up for two DUIs. Wazzu students would drive across the Idaho border where the drinking age went from 21 to 19. So her lawyer got her a deal and she moved home with me where I promised I would get her through the next three years of college. And I did. So we were then living together, and I’m working at night, and guess who shows up but the redhead. I'd always and since had a thing that I avoided redheads as "trouble". Good and fun trouble, but would ineventialy lead to not so great troubles. And I'm half Irish, so... 

So she shows up at work at Tower Records and wants me to go with her again. It seems obvious this is the night that I’m gonna get lucky with this woman. Finally. But too late.

I point out to her, "you’re too late. I live with my girlfriend now and I can’t do this. Had you gone for it last year it would have been an entirely different thing." That was painful. But I have self-respect so...I was polite and then went back to my cash register shift with my back to the giant glass pane window, front wall of Tower Records. I swear to God… I and another guy were at the register and it was a very slow night which didn't help things. As she sat in her car just outside the window behind me for a half hour, pouting and staring at me. Until finally I noticed, she had left. I never saw her again.

Missed opportunities…

Just switched over to Pod Save America because the WTF? podcast is over

We need to add some standards to our government requirements. Like you shouldn’t be able to be president if you’re convicted of a federal crime. I am for forgiveness, but with Trump...come on. 

And with the Supreme Court Justices there have to be ethics rules and with some fucking teeth.

OK, I did it. I made 5 miles again, finally! It’s been a while.

Two other things the podcast just mentioned. There’s a lot of Trump forcing his attorney's hands on his defense team and it’s pretty obvious because they keep doing things like asking for dismissal, which is just making them all look stupid.

And second, if you swap Biden in Trump‘s place for this trial and the shit Trump's pulled during his trial, the double standard would be obvious as Biden would be getting incessantly attacked because he's supposed to be the adult and actual law and order person between the two of them. Even though for decades, the Republican Party claimed to be THE party of law and order. Even though it’s actually just a party of toxic, capitalism and big business. Whatever...

On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and leave you with that. 

It’s noon and time for lunch.

As always, I wish you all, all the greatest success and good health!
Just put in the time and effort for those successes.
Until next time!

Cheers! Sláinte!

Tacoma Mall History, Both Mine and Ours

1966 - One year after the Tacoma Mall opening...

My mother once abandoned me at the Tacoma Mall. I believe I was in sixth grade at the time. To be fair, it was different times, and I kind of deserved it. For the past few mall visits, I'd break off from her, typically when we were with my younger brother as he'd distract her so I could just...vanish. Purposely.

Why? So I could go to the local Mall toy store. To be fair (to me) I always wanted to go there. Sometimes I could, sometimes mom would say, No, we don't have time. And I'd be crushed. And bored nearly to tears in having instead to follow her around (watch your brother) and put up with her looking at ladies clothes (or worse, clothes for us).

Grand entrance Tacoma Mall - 1970s

Finally, she got sick of my disappearing. Probably frightened her the first time it happened, until she eventually just angry with me by the last time. To be fair, one day I was looking for a suit jacket at Penney's and my own son of about five suddenly disappeared. I was freaking out.

Finally in just a few minutes frantically rushing around the clothing department, I found him purposely hiding in one of those circular clothing racks, happy as a clam. But I couldn't help but flashback to that day at the mall in 1967.

Myself and little brother about the time mentioned here

Finally, one-day mom said, If you do that again, I'll leave you and you can walk all the way home!

So, of course, the very next time we went to the mall...I disappeared again. I got my fill of toys, this time without mom ever showing up to get me. So I wandered around in search of them. I went to where they had been heading, the Bon Marche, most likely. But, they weren't there. So I wandered all over the mall until I was getting tired but, still no mom and little brother.

Finally, I was getting worried, myself. So I went outside to a phone booth and called home to tell someone I couldn't find them. I checked my pockets and found a single dime. I always was supposed to carry one for an emergency phone call.

Mom answered.
Of course, mom answered. She didn't really chew me out, just laid out the situation, the past situation, and what this meant to me, today, right then. I promised I wouldn't do it again.
She just said, You said that last time.
I asked, So are you going to come get me?
No, she said. You can take the bus home.
I dug into my pockets. My empty pockets, hoping for a quarter. I told her I had spent my last dime on the phone call. The only dime I'd had.
She just said, Well then, you have two feet, I guess you're walking home.
WALK? Home? I asked dejectedly.
Yes, she responded, all the way.
At that time in my life, I don't think I had walked anywhere alone that far. I was shaken. And I broke. I told her that.
She just said, Then you're walking home. It's not that far. See you when you get here.
What?
And with that...she hung up.

I was stunned. I looked around. Hustle and bustle all around me. Adults, cars, a huge parking lot. I stood there for a while, contemplating. No one was coming. I was alone. I could stay there forever, or I could starting walking and maybe one day, I would arrive back at home. Where the family was. Protection, safety. Food. my toys. But... it's so far! I looked around.

No one I knew was around me. I knew no one inside knew me, or I, them. I was lost. But was I? I knew where I was. I knew how to get home, it was pretty much a straight shot. It seemed so far though. Maybe I should just stay there, live at the mall. That would teach my mom!

But in the end, I walked. Google Maps now shows it's 1.4 miles and a half-hour walk for an adult. Which I wasn't then, so it probably took me about 45 minutes and I'm sure I didn't rush. There's always so much to see.

By the time I got to the 48th street bridge that goes over the I5 freeway (I know I had to stop and watch the traffic rushing below me), it had all turned from a punishment, to an adventure. But then, that was just who I was. Adventure was always all around me and I sought it out at every turn. Much to the consternation and frustration of my mother.

Adventure got me into this mess and adventure was going to get me out.

Eventually, I made it home just fine.

By the time I got there, I was expecting in my best "A Christmas Story" fantasy, a hearty hero's welcome home. But instead, of course, I got home to, Oh, you're back, good, get ready for dinner. No hero's welcome. Just a "Next time, don't wander off."

And I never did again.

Today the Tacoma Mall is 1.4 million square feet of retail space, with approximately 13.5 million annual shopper visits.

Tacoma Mall 1967 grand opening, me with Kirby Grant, "Sky King" of TV fame

I'd had a long relationship with the Tacoma Mall. The Tacoma News Tribune (or, TNT, October 10, 2015) states it was on October 12, 1965, when it opened so I'm unsure what date is what. The detailed photo below is from the News Tribune article where you can enlarge this photo.

I've put a green X on the right where Sky King and the ceremony was held. As I remembered it, they were opening it too soon but wanted to and had to and so had this event. But I believe later there was a much larger four-day event as noted in the article. As the Bon Marche moved in a full year before the official opening, I can only assume this was the opening event we went to. And it wasn't all that big of an event, but big enough.

Go to News Tribune article to expaind

TNT article also states:

"The four-day-long grand opening drew 400,000 people — equal to Pierce County’s entire population at that time.
"The sparkling new mall brought enclosed shopping to Tacoma with 71 stores, 1,500 jobs, 900,000 square feet of sales space and parking for 7,200 cars. Fireworks, singers and dancers provided entertainment during the grand opening.
"Today, the mall has grown to 1.4 million square feet and employs 2,500 to 3,000 people in 150 stores. While malls have faltered and closed across the country, the Tacoma Mall still functions as it did 50 years ago — but with a few role changes.
"Of the original 1965 mall stores, J.C. Penney, Hallmark, Motherhood Maternity, Zales Jewelers and Weisfield’s Jewelers are the last survivors.
"Interstate 5 had opened the month before, and J.C. Penney, among other stores, was preparing for its opening at the mall. Eventually downtown retailer Sears moved. The Bon Marche (now Macy’s) moved from downtown to the mall site in 1964 — a full year before the rest of the mall opened." 
As I remember it there was a soft opening and I was there the day it officially opened when there was only one store open and running. I believe there was only the large Bon Marche, and by our opening day even, JC Penny's. Sky King was there, the actor who played that role on TV, Kirby Grant, was famous among many TV-watching kids at that time. Kirby was born in Butte, Montana. My older sister was also born in  Montana.

Tacoma Mall 1967 grand opening, my younger brother with Kirby Grant

My younger brother and I got to sit on his lap on a raised wooden platform in the middle of the east Mall parking lot, situated on the side nearest the freeway. As you may be able to see, our mother wrote on this photo above that "Sky King" died October 1985. Ten years after my younger brother died in June 1975, two weeks prior to his 15th birthday, from liver cancer in what felt like a Lifetime channel, MOW kind of story.

As a kid, I loved the Tacoma Mall. At some point, my step-father, my late little brother's dad, worked at Nalley's during the day. In the afternoon after his warehouse job, he would take a nap, be miserably grumpy if you got in his way, then put on a suit and went to work at the Auto-View Drive-in Theater where he was Assistant Manager. Homer was the manager and his friend. I liked Homer and his kids.

Back in the 40-50s after the war where he was in a military band or something, and I think some kind of clerk, my step-dad had his own orchestra in Philidelphia. Our mother met him after that I believe. I never found out why he stopped leading a band.

I saw a photo once of them. Each member of the 20 or so member band had his own little stand before him with my step-dad's initials on it and him standing proudly before them looking at the photographer with a big smile on his face and holding a conducting baton. It had to be one of his greatest moments.

Yeah, this might have been a FEW years before I first went there

As for the Auto-View Drive-in, my oldest brother had worked there some. Then my older sister worked there in high school and eventually, I worked there, too. In the end more than my siblings, from 9th through 12th grades. I had a lot of experiences there as we had kind of grown-up there through the 1960s.

We were there every Friday, rain or shine, seeing whatever there was. I think the only film we missed seeing there was "I Am Curious, Yellow" because of the hype and marketing about it indicating it was inappropriate for kids.

Wikipedia: "The film includes numerous and frank scenes of nudity and staged sexual intercourse. One particularly controversial scene features Lena kissing her lover's flaccid penis." I saw it as an adult and I can say, it was tamer than many of the films I saw as a kid before the film ratings came into being, with the exception of that one scene or perhaps just one shot.

Tacoma Mall Cinerama

I mention my step-father because there was a time when he got offered to manage the Tacoma Mall Cinerama Theater. The Cinerama was a big deal when it opened in 1974.

Lincoln High School, Tacoma, WA

I graduated in 1973 from Lincoln High School. By that time my step-father had moved with his friend and manager to the newly opened 112th Street Drive-in leaving me as snack bar manager in 12th grade back at the Auto-View where I had worked first in 9th grade when I cleaned up the field, a disgusting back-breaking job even for a kid still fairly low to the ground.

Then in 10th grade moving up and into the snack bar and eventually taking over the managing of it. The drive-in by then was run mostly by kids from Lincoln High School.

Tacoma Mall Cinerama lobby

Tacoma Mall Cinerama thearer

The Cinerama had opened with high expectations. But never showed a Cinerama release. I was with our family at one of the many grand openings of the Seattle Cinerama, ours being for the regional area theater managers and their families. We saw, "Krakatoa, East of Java" which I thought for the time had rather silly SFX. The Seattle Cinerama had a license that was exclusive of a 50-mile radius and since Tacoma is only some 30 miles from it, our Cinerama couldn't get a license.

But the year the Tacoma Cinerama opened my stepfather was offered to manage it. We talked about it as a family. It supposedly had an apartment where we could move into as some theaters, even drive-in theaters, have. The thought of actually living IN a theater was intoxicating to me and my younger brother. But he had just started on his long terminal road through liver cancer and the doctor bills were just starting to pile up.

Mom finally said just shut us down and said, No, we can't afford it.

We all wanted to move (not my sister). But Mom made the final decision as she always did about bills and finances. And she was right as the doctor bills only got bigger and bigger, finally wiping out her inheritance from my grandfather, and then receiving unbelievable help from the American Cancer Society, according to her.

That window by the peak was home for a year after the military
Thanks to my older brother letting me stay there and get my act together.

As an adult, after I got out of the military in 1979. I was staying in my brother's garage off Sheridan and 38th street. I fixed it up to make it livable, put in some insulation and a chimney as it had a wood-burning stove, but it wasn't much.

Though I had some great times there. Sometimes friends would stop by a 2am or so and we'd have a little party and they'd leave and I'd crash and be up in time for nothing, or whatever. Eventually that whatever became college. All I had to do was cut wood for heat for both my brother's house and my loft, that he'd bring home from his construction jobs.

Mostly trees they had to cut down and I'd chainsaw and split wood for my rent. It was an arrangement that worked for us both. Plus, his wife at the time was pregnant with twins I helped out after they were born. And they needed the help! I wasn't the only one. They always seem to have friends over and it was quite an experience.

One day he talked me into going to college as I had Vietnam war VA benefits and so, I did. In 1980 I started working at Tower Posters off 38th street and attending Ft. Steilacoom Community College (now, Pierce College).

One day I discovered a field on the other side of I5 from the Mall had a special kind of mushroom that made my days very entertaining over the course of that year or so. How did I find that out? I'd been an amateur mycologist for years. They called to me.

That leads into some very interesting stories including one about my girlfriend and I the night we saw the film that I think was playing for the first time (Superman) at the Tacoma Mall Cinerama and well, I've detailed that adventure in a blog article elsewhen.

Eventually a year later some construction going on and it seemed to upset the environment as construction tends to do, and the shroom extravaganza sadly died off.

When I think back about the Tacoma Mall, a wealth of memories and situations floods into my mind. Some very good times. We met Dick Balch the notorious crazed (but very nice) car dealer there. Eating lunch and giant Crab or Shrimp Louies at Johnny's Dock at the Mall. Lunch at the Bon Marche restaurant. Visiting Nordstrom's with my sister when I was in jr high and being around many attractive young women who all had more money than we did.

I went back recently. I had worked after I got out of the service, and later after college, at Tower Posters on 38th st, the original location, and Tower Records, and Tower Video (then moved to Tower Video in Seattle on Mercer).

We still see one another from time to time, those Tower employees. I'm still friends with some of them. One, two really, part of a little group in my Tacoma Records supervisor in tapes, and later Video manager and eventual Seattle video manager and roommate, and our other friend.

Here's a photo from one of our reunion days I took on Instagram. You can visit my account on there to see these, the shots below I took of the Tacoma Mall that day and of other local places, and if you head toward the today on my Instagram account, you'll see production stills from the short horror film I'm making. "Gumdrop, a short horror", is a prequel, based upon a short story I published years ago (Gumdrop City, a fiction horror story based on a true crime).

Tacoma Mall Red Robin Tacoma Tower employees reunion 2018

That manager friend and I talked about getting together, at our old hang out, the Tacoma Mall Red Robin where Tower employees hung out after work sometimes. And before work, sometimes. That threesome turned into a bigger event and many old friends and employees showed up. I got there early just so I could revisit places I lived nearby, that house I had to walk to from the Mall at 12, and I walked through today's Tacoma Mall.

Today's Tacoma Mall grand entrance

It's changed a lot. So many more businesses in that area.

Tacoma Mall Food Court intersection

The mall once nearly dead, was alive, and vibrant and had many shoppers and people just hanging out, eating or whatever. it was a culture shock for me. But it wasn't sad, not at all. And then I ended it with that visit to Red Robin and some old friends.

Rolland from Steelzilla

One of our friends, Rolland at Steelzilla plasma cut us some Tower related metal plaque momentoes that were pretty awesome and mine's hanging here in my house. We had another meeting some months later and we got some more of those cool cut-outs.

Tower Tacoma March 31, 2019 Red Robin Reunion

All he asked was we take a photo with our gifts and post them. And we did, to our Facebook Tower Records group. Here's mine from our last meet up. Being they were Grammy's (for those who worked at Records) and Oscars (for those who worked at Video) I thought I'd throw on a tux for my photo.

Terrifying, I know, but I had a blast

Which was quite a bit different from my first gift the previous meetup:

From our first reunion

And yes, we're a motley lot. Always were. I myself for one look much different than I did my first days working at Tower Posters in Tacoma. I've gone through some changes in my looks, to be sure.

Thanks so much, Time and... Life.

Myself at Tower Posters Tacoma 1980

WWU 1982, hey, my girlfriend staged this one

Me with a very nice Teri Weigel, Tower Video,
Mercer St. Store Seattle, WA April 1986

Auditions headshot 1989

A few years later after I graduated from Western Washington University and moved from Tacoma and then to Seattle's Tower Video store on Mercer St. and into some more very interesting experiences. I worked with Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam. I lost some friends back then to AIDS.

And yes, my looks changed a bit. So has the Tacoma Mall's looks through its never-ending series of contractions and expansions and evolutions and facelifts.

So to sum this all up, yes...the Tacoma Mall and I, have had a vastly deep and long-lasting relationship. Our looks have changed. Our friends have changed. And life continues on.

And that my friends, is really about all I can say about it...thanks for sharing this journey into my past and that of Tacoma's famous Mall.

Cheers! Slainte!

Cameron Crowe's 2011 "Pearl Jam Twenty" Documentary Nearly Killed Me

Have you seen Cameron Crowe's documentary: "Pearl Jam Twenty."

I'm so pissed about that. No, not the documentary. Just about my past. No maybe it didn't nearly kill me, but it did remind me of some things that nearly had.

First let me say that Pearl Jam is playing their first Seattle show in nine years on August 8th, 2018 in two days. I've blogged before about working with their bassist Jeff Ament at Tower Video back in the 80s when he was playing with his band Green River and before Mother Lovebone. Jeff was a great guy to work with, always a smile, always positive. I was his supervisor and when he left he turned his position as media buyer over to me. A job I'd also had at the Tacoma Tower Video store just after graduating from university and one I took in Seattle to be the top Tower media buyer worldwide at one point.

I sat there watching the documentary with its footage of the Seattle, remembering how I lived near downtown during the 80s, just being frustrated. So I thought it might be interesting to blog about it and get it off my chest. Maybe something will be interesting to someone. Or maybe someone will appreciate the frustration of what I went through. Especially, in hindsight.

I was working at Tower Video Mercer store in Seattle. I've mentioned all this before, but this time it is in the context of what Crowe's doc was all about.

At some point in the documentary they talk about Eddie's first time with the band, how they came together. Eddie was talking about his dad, saying he hadn't known who his dad was until after he was dead. In a way, I could relate. I knew my dad, but hardly. His choice I'm made to believe.

With all the documentary had to show, with my past, our city we lived in, in knowing Jeff, Ament (Pearl Jam bassist), in working with him at Tower Video, in his having passed on his position as media buyer to me, in my having missed out on all that was going on in Seattle mostly because I had no money, and so little adventure left to me back at that time. Trapped by nearly everyone I knew living in Tacoma or Bellingham, where I so recently had received my university degree in Psychology, as well as a minor in creative writing in fiction and screen and script writing.

But at that time I was at the bottom. I even came close to killing myself during those drug fueled days, those wild 1980s. But that's another story.

I remember showing up one day at the Video store and one of our employees whom I was close to,  came in on her day off. She was hyper, there was blood all over her jeans, there was toilet paper taped to her wrists. It was obvious the kind of night she had. There were a lot of people in the store at that time. The girl she was living with was there.

I called her over. She came up to me, at the bar there, the effective barrier between the customers and their needs all day every day, and ourselves. I asked if she was okay. She said she was. I said, what is that about? She said, it's just what happened, why should I hide it? I looked around, everyone was busy, I pulled back the sleeves on my black jacket so she could see the toilet paper taped to my left wrist. Her eyes opened big, she looked at her writs, then at mine. Her eyes beckoned a question.

"You too? YOU? Why?"  She was echoing my own questions. We both thought the other had the world by the tail. Funny how we misperceive reality in someone we know fairly well.

We both survived that experience. We talked about it, briefly. We both walked away and lived to this day.

Many filtered through Tower stores in Seattle back in those days. Bands did "in stories", signing things, selling albums.

Playboy playmates also did in stores. One I even got to go up to the Space Needle at midnight with for drinks. Teri Weigel was her name. She was like most playmates I met, smart, vivacious, personable and a surprise to some, very professional. It was drinks with her across the table from her and her playboy handler, as well as about six other Tower people, including the district manager, a rather slimy little man, no one much liked who worked with him.

I still have the photo Teri congoled me into taking with her around here somewhere but as I'm still moving into my new house at this time, my main hard drive is still in a box in the basement until I can open enough boxes to have room to set up our new sound studio that we will use to produce more new audiobooks of my stories and perhaps record some local musicians who have shown some interest.

Teri was engaged to a guy back home, a secret she only shared with my apartment mate's / store manager's soon to be fiancee, wife and then ex wife. I was to be his best man, as he was eventually mine with my own soon to be fiancee, then wife, my son's mother and eventually my own ex wife.

Those were wild times. Weed, alcohol and drug fueled times. One night stands, multiple night stands, but never quite enough. Adventure thankfully came to us at Tower.

One night I looked up as I was putting away video tape boxes on the "floor" of the store, the public area where people chose their films for the night and realized that at 6'2", I was being dwarfed, not by one, but by about six other guys. It was daunting. Stunned I wandered back to the counter where I asked an employee, "What the hell is going on?" One of them came to my aide saying, "Don't you recognize half of the Seattle Sonics Basketball team? They're hanging at one of their homes and just in for some tapes to watch."

But no. I hadn't recognized them. It was surreal. An odd feeling being the little guy in an entire room. But it was a relief nonetheless to find a reason I was feeling so very tiny all of a sudden.

There were times that rock bands were in the store also looking for videos to watch on their off times. Or sometimes they'd just stop by to hang out and chat. One time I caught the lead singer of one well known local band (Mud Honey? No, I don't think that was them... Soundgarden? Metal Church? Maybe?) on top of one of our store counters, acting the front man in an empty store, just feeling good and having a good day. There were some bizarre scenes at times in that store, now long gone.

It would seem just about everyone showed up at Tower Video for films to watch. Bruce Springsteen's manager showed up one night to get Bruce some films.

One night I was wandering around downtown by myself and almost ducked into a dance club I'd never been in that was down some stairs, but instead I moved on. I kept hesitating, something pulling me into that place, but I didn't go. Mostly for lack of money. I could have gotten in, but that would have defined my night. Instead I hit a few other places. When I got to work the next day, I discovered that had I gone in, Gwen Stefani and band No Doubt had been there dancing the night away.

So much was happening all around me during those years and somehow, I missed most of it. But then, had I been working at some retail outlet other than Tower, I probably would have missed all of it.

Getting back to Crowe's documentary...

I do have to say it was a pleasure and yet a rather painful thing to watch. So many memories of those years flooded back to me, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. All those things I missed that were all around me back in those days was devastating. I knew things were going on back in those days, but not to the extent to which I missed out of so very much. I was at one point at my lowest point in my life which in part explains why so much zipped by me. And so in that sense, it was great to see just what all was going on in Seattle at that time.

Crowe's produced a great little documentary and if you have any interest in the Seattle music scene or to be sure, Pearl Jam or the bands associated with their coming together originally, it's definitely something to check out.

But then, those are what memories indeed are, aren't they....

#concert #PearlJam #Seattle #Tower